I love Henle, don't get me wrong. But I don't want to spend 3x the money for something if it isn't absolutely necessary. The sole purpose of sheet music isn't to look nice and be of quality construction. It is to produce a good performance. If the Schirmer's will provide me with a good end result, I will buy the Schirmer's.
Something to keep in mind: I don't care at all about given fingerings.
Have you had any bad experiences with Chopin/Mikuli? Wrong notes, added octaves, etc. ?
Have you had any bad experiences with Chopin/Mikuli? Wrong notes, added octaves, etc. ?
You're asking as though there's any one "right" version. There isn't. The different Chopin editions go mainly on different manuscripts -- yes, with perhaps some opinion and 'tradition' mixed in, but mostly on different manuscripts. To my knowledge there's nothing in any of the editions with sins like what you're saying.
To the extent that anyone is suggesting another edition, I don't know why it would be Henle. That's good, but so is Mikuli, and it seems the current predominant view is that if there's any one edition that's best, it's the National Edition (also called the Polish edition), the one edited by Jan Ekier.
Mikuli was my first edition of Chopin, but now I have the Paderewski. Mikuli is not bad though. I do remember a wrong note in the Mikuli edition... but I don't remember where. It was a while ago.
Henle is not (only) about looking nice and be of quality construction. It's the scholarship that goes into it.
As far as I'm concerned I'm still holding on to any Henle scores I have and don't care one bit about other scores of mine, from other publishers...
Are you saying that if I buy the Schirmer's, my performance will by poorer than had I bought the Henle?
I can't tell, since I don't know you and even if I did know you, you still wouldn't be me.
BUT I do know that depending on the paper manuscript I have, and especially the pencils I use, my compositions change for the better (or worst), if you can believe that.
To analyse a bit:
1. A poor page turn could wreck a piece for you. 2. Poor fingering can also do the same. 3. A score falling apart (after quite some work on it) should be a turn away factor. 4. But mostly it's what you're used at. I'm very used to henle editions and find that the Wiener Urtext (for example) are too spacey for my taste. I'm also used to our own scores (EMF I mean). If you bring me other editions (especially some older ones) I might cringe so much, as to don't care for studying that particular work any more.
Henle is not (only) about looking nice and be of quality construction. It's the scholarship that goes into it.
As far as I'm concerned I'm still holding on to any Henle scores I have and don't care one bit about other scores of mine, from other publishers...
Are you saying that if I buy the Schirmer's, my performance will by poorer than had I bought the Henle?
Since I assume you're not auditioning for Juilliard or entering some big competition, no one you play for will know or care at all about some wrong note in some edition. Even in those cases, how you play in infinitely more important than if the edition has some minor error. 99.999% of how well you play has nothing to do with the edition unless you choose a heavily edited edition (and especially if the editor makes bad choices).
If you're personally interested in an up to date urtext type edition or are looking for an edition that doesn't contain a lot of the editor's own ideas and includes only Chopin's markings that's a different question.
Since my impression is you have no teacher, getting a good teacher is at least 10,000 times more important than which edition you choose if you want to improve. Even if you take only an occasional lesson.
I bought all of the Henle volumes after having all the Schirmer Mikuli and Joseffy editions in place, mostly on recommendation from those on this site. My conclusion is that they are way overhyped. You will find differences to Mikuli, but they are very minor. Some examples:
In 48/1 m10: left hand Eb3-Ab3-Eb4 in Mikuli = C3-Ab3-Eb4 in Henle.
In the last measure of 9/1: there is an addition of Bb2 in the left hand in Mikuli.
In op. 35 first movement: the repeat of the introductory section starts on the doppio movimento in m5 in Mikuli (and Chopin's ms ... and the B&H first edition) instead of at the beginning in Henle.
The best thing about Henle is the legibility and quality of construction. I don't think it justifies the added cost.
One of the reasons I go on and on is that some people have pre-conceived notions, which have emanated from the Urtext brainwashing, that what is printed on the page is the real deal. It is not.
However, as is shown in the following link stating Karol Mikuli's bio, this man took it to the next level before he made his edition. And, what that link also shows is the name of Moritz Rosenthal as one of his students.
The point is if you want to know how to play Chopin, you get the Mikuli score, and then you lower yourself to my level (Pogo?) and you get a recording of Moritz Rosenthal playing the music of this composer.
All of this is said, ad nauseum, in Neal Peres Da Costa's book, "Off The Record," but then again, a lot of posts here get off to blowing a whole lot of smoke when it comes to music interpretation.
[...] Are you saying that if I buy the Schirmer's, my performance will by poorer than had I bought the Henle?
I am of the belief that all questions are asked for a valid reason - which reason is sometimes only perceived by the one asking the question - and that there is really no such thing as a stupid question. However ....
If you don't like or can't afford the expense of the Henle, you won't "suffer" from buying the Schirmer Mikuli, although my recent experiences with Schirmer have been variable - but so have they been with Peters, another once-respected edition.
I happen to like Henle for the quality of print, the durability of the bindings, their ability to lie flat on the music stand and the (relative) absence of really awkward page turns.
While all tout the scholarship of the New Polish Edition (Ekier), and I don't deny that scholarship I think it is overpriced for three reasons : - the bindings are not nearly as good as Henle's (and maybe others I don't have experience with, - page turns are often more awkward than they need be and don't seem to be planned well, and - they publish the posthumous works separately from those published during Chopin's lifetime, so if you want all the Nocturnes, all the Polonaises, etc., you have to buy two volumes. That to me is simply a cash grab to which I will not add my dollars.
The Mikuli edition was originally published in large format by Kistner. Schirmers re-engraved most of it for the American edition, and some things were changed slightly in the process: Bars that were on different lines might have ended up joined, and phrase marks that crossed from one line to the next might have been separated in the process, as a friend showed me in one of the Kistner volumes.
The Mikuli edition is based on his studies with Chopin, as well as other students that he knew, and are pretty reliable, once you understand that Chopin himself was not always reliable.
One of the treasures in my collection is the Kistner edition of the chamber music. Mikuli consulted with Franchomme while editing that.
As I've read someone on this forum (I believe it was Thrac) so eloquently put it; I'd rather have an edition from someone who had heard and studied with the composer than someone coming 200 years later who's probably never even touched a piano in their life.
Henle is not (only) about looking nice and be of quality construction. It's the scholarship that goes into it.
As far as I'm concerned I'm still holding on to any Henle scores I have and don't care one bit about other scores of mine, from other publishers...
Are you saying that if I buy the Schirmer's, my performance will by poorer than had I bought the Henle?
No edition will make you performance any better or worse. THAT is up to you, because it is what you DO with what is in the edition(s) you use that makes the performance.
Henle is not (only) about looking nice and be of quality construction. It's the scholarship that goes into it.
As far as I'm concerned I'm still holding on to any Henle scores I have and don't care one bit about other scores of mine, from other publishers...
Are you saying that if I buy the Schirmer's, my performance will by poorer than had I bought the Henle?
No edition will make you performance any better or worse. THAT is up to you, because it is what you DO with what is in the edition(s) you use that makes the performance.
Which is exactly the point I was making with the wink face. Apparently no one is getting it.
To the extent that anyone is suggesting another edition, I don't know why it would be Henle. That's good, but so is Mikuli, and it seems the current predominant view is that if there's any one edition that's best, it's the National Edition (also called the Polish edition), the one edited by Jan Ekier.
This is the edition I primarily use. The first thing I noticed is that many ties that we take for granted were not written in by Chopin in several sources, and it's still a mystery exactly what he intended. There are also many, many different notes compared with the Mikuli, Paderewski, and Henle editions I grew up with.
Other than that, the main quirk of the National Edition is that if you order the Impromptus, you only get the ones that were published during his lifetime.. and similarly with the Preludes, Mazurkas, Valses, and so on. The posthumous works are published separately.
Are you saying that if I buy the Schirmer's, my performance will by poorer than had I bought the Henle?
Yes, it will be. But correlation isn't causation.
That's actually a very interesting post.
I agree with it. I'd bet a fair number of nickels that as a group, people who get Henle play better than people who get Schirmer.
Or at least that was true up through the time when the internet took over. Schirmer, besides being relatively cheap, was simply the brand that was most available in stores, so if you didn't know very much (or didn't care), Schirmer was usually what you'd get. Now, it could be different, according to the way things turn up online. I wouldn't think it is, including because cost would still favor Schirmer, but I don't think we can be so sure now.
I remember one of the first times I went into Patelson's, must have been about 15....I asked for some particular thing, the salesperson asked me if I preferred a particular edition. I said "Schirmer," just because it was the only name that I knew (and I felt pretty proud that I knew that!) ....and she gave me an awfully funny look. It took a few more years till I realized why.
Don't mean to bump this thread but the below struck my interest as a Chopinophile.
I've been doing some additional reading about Mikuli and thought I'd share, just for kicks. I always knew Mikuli was one of Chopin's more prodigious pupils but didn't know he also acted as Chopin's teaching assistant in the later years. In publishing Chopin's complete volumes in the late 19th century, he sought to right the many published errors that existed across the French, English, and German editions at the time. He did this employing scores marked by Chopin's own pen, during his own lessons as well as others'--something that can cannot be said for other editors. Hence I'd venture to say that a lot of Mikuli's "Romanticizations" (and to be fair there aren't THAT many) are really directives that didn't make print but did feature in Chopin's executional guidance. Add the fact that Chopin was notoriously capricious, dare careless, in his many manuscripts...
Anyway, I thought this fact quite interesting given the general preference that seems to predominate for everything "urtext". Nothing wrong with urtext if that's your thing, but this guy actually studied under and assisted teaching for Chopin, and likely gave us the closest representation of how Chopin himself played his music. (As Chopin often played more than his pupils in lesson!) Henle, on the other hand, can be, dare I say, somewhat sterile by comparison.
Anyway-- Just my humble opinion, for anyone out there who might hesitate to buy a Schirmer Mikuli edition.
I've been doing some additional reading about Mikuli and thought I'd share, just for kicks. I always knew Mikuli was one of Chopin's more prodigious pupils but didn't know he also acted as Chopin's teaching assistant in the later years. In publishing Chopin's complete volumes in the late 19th century, he sought to right the many published errors that existed across the French, English, and German editions at the time. He did this employing scores marked by Chopin's own pen, during his own lessons as well as others'--something that can cannot be said for other editors. Hence I'd venture to say that a lot of Mikuli's "Romanticizations" (and to be fair there aren't THAT many) are really directives that didn't make print but did feature in Chopin's executional guidance. Add the fact that Chopin was notoriously capricious, dare careless, in his many manuscripts...
Anyway, I thought this fact quite interesting given the general preference that seems to predominate for everything "urtext". Nothing wrong with urtext if that's your thing, but this guy actually studied under and assisted teaching for Chopin, and likely gave us the closest representation of how Chopin himself played his music. (As Chopin often played more than his pupils in lesson!) Henle, on the other hand, can be, dare I say, somewhat sterile by comparison.
Senor, you have really stepped in it now! They, the Urtext lurkers of this website, are now going to compare you to me. You are screwed.
Seriously, the PhD. applied musicologists that I have cited prior to this post, Clive Brown, Kenneth Hamilton, and Neal Peres Da Costa, all bear out your most inciting observation.
Jeez, the next thing you are going to do is to suggest that people listen to a recording of Moritz Rosenthal, who actually studied these Mikuli scores as his student.
Senor, you have really stepped in it now! They, the Urtext lurkers of this website, are now going to compare you to me. You are screwed.
Seriously, the PhD. applied musicologists that I have cited prior to this post, Clive Brown, Kenneth Hamilton, and Neal Peres Da Costa, all bear out your most inciting observation.
Jeez, the next thing you are going to do is to suggest that people listen to a recording of Moritz Rosenthal, who actually studied these Mikuli scores as his student.
I am curious about the emphasis on Rosenthal in connection to Chopin compared with other recorded pianists as he was very restless and energico in his pursuit of teachers and after studying with Mikuli at the conservatory went on to learn what he could from Joseffy, Liszt and even spent time with Anton Rubinstein - the latter was initiated when, according to one article I researched years ago, Rosenthal who it seems was quite athletic rented a cabin or chateau across a lake from where Anton Rubinstein was staying and then swam across the water to confront him!
In my mind a pianist much more closely associated both with Mikuli and Chopin's music was Raoul Koczalski whose recordings show much more of the tonal palette and also the types of freedom of motion which I think you are looking for.
For possible bad experiences with Chopin editions one thing I would wonder about is if maybe some editions might make a better or more conscientious first impression on judges at piano competitions as the competitors specify the published edition of each work for the judges to read while listening.
I've been doing some additional reading about Mikuli and thought I'd share, just for kicks. I always knew Mikuli was one of Chopin's more prodigious pupils but didn't know he also acted as Chopin's teaching assistant in the later years. In publishing Chopin's complete volumes in the late 19th century, he sought to right the many published errors that existed across the French, English, and German editions at the time. He did this employing scores marked by Chopin's own pen, during his own lessons as well as others'--something that can cannot be said for other editors. Hence I'd venture to say that a lot of Mikuli's "Romanticizations" (and to be fair there aren't THAT many) are really directives that didn't make print but did feature in Chopin's executional guidance. Add the fact that Chopin was notoriously capricious, dare careless, in his many manuscripts...
Anyway, I thought this fact quite interesting given the general preference that seems to predominate for everything "urtext". Nothing wrong with urtext if that's your thing, but this guy actually studied under and assisted teaching for Chopin, and likely gave us the closest representation of how Chopin himself played his music. (As Chopin often played more than his pupils in lesson!) Henle, on the other hand, can be, dare I say, somewhat sterile by comparison.
Senor, you have really stepped in it now! They, the Urtext lurkers of this website, are now going to compare you to me. You are screwed.
Seriously, the PhD. applied musicologists that I have cited prior to this post, Clive Brown, Kenneth Hamilton, and Neal Peres Da Costa, all bear out your most inciting observation.
Jeez, the next thing you are going to do is to suggest that people listen to a recording of Moritz Rosenthal, who actually studied these Mikuli scores as his student.
Just wanted to put out there the information out there for those who may not be aware, since there are so many editions/editors. I am currently reading the Niecks biography of Chopin, which goes into great depth surrounding the germination, publication, and teaching of Chopin's compositions. Very interesting read incidentally, and apropos the thread topic.
Just one more thing to be clear: I meant not to start a factious debate, really, as there are very many learned POVs in this forum, nor to issue a blanket prescription for playing Chopin that implores all pianists to defer to Mikuli all the time, as if it be the ONLY acceptable practice. This is in contrast to previous discussion promulgating relentless chord arpeggiation as the uniquely "correct" articulation of composers' intentions, nay, "assumptions" that such rolls are implied as a matter of course. Any way, off topic I supposed, and I most sincerely wish that this latter topic not be resurrected here for all to relive, following the content of my message. So I hope we can stick to Mikuli.
In this, I just sought to add credence to poor Mikuli as against the (not at all used pejoratively) urtextians since there can be no debate, IMHO, that this guy had the chops, as it were. Who better, really? Perhaps because he published his volumes in the late 19th century, we are quick to dismiss anything ostensibly "extra-urtextian" to be "Romanticization" of Chopin's intention.
But again, all POVs are welcome ... mine is not scripture.
Senor, you have really stepped in it now! They, the Urtext lurkers of this website, are now going to compare you to me. You are screwed.
Seriously, the PhD. applied musicologists that I have cited prior to this post, Clive Brown, Kenneth Hamilton, and Neal Peres Da Costa, all bear out your most inciting observation.
Jeez, the next thing you are going to do is to suggest that people listen to a recording of Moritz Rosenthal, who actually studied these Mikuli scores as his student.
I am curious about the emphasis on Rosenthal in connection to Chopin compared with other recorded pianists as he was very restless and energico in his pursuit of teachers and after studying with Mikuli at the conservatory went on to learn what he could from Joseffy, Liszt and even spent time with Anton Rubinstein - the latter was initiated when, according to one article I researched years ago, Rosenthal who it seems was quite athletic rented a cabin or chateau across a lake from where Anton Rubinstein was staying and then swam across the water to confront him!
In my mind a pianist much more closely associated both with Mikuli and Chopin's music was Raoul Koczalski whose recordings show much more of the tonal palette and also the types of freedom of motion which I think you are looking for.
For possible bad experiences with Chopin editions one thing I would wonder about is if maybe some editions might make a better or more conscientious first impression on judges at piano competitions as the competitors specify the published edition of each work for the judges to read while listening.
M.
Interesting point, Michael. I've watched some of the Chopin International Competitions, and they seem to prefer urtext/Henle/Vienna. Actually I find that urtext is very much en vogue generally speaking (including here on PW, observationally), BUT Romanticizing works was just as much en vogue in the 19th century. Difference is, those in the 19th century actually heard or studied with Chopin and/or his pupils as opposed to sitting in a library! And, anyway, are little tweaks to dynamics and a couple of extra notes so terrible? My own experience reveals that any dynamics that were "added" I intuitively embed in my own rendition anyway, because they seem to just belong.
I'm currently learning op. 35 so forgive me for using this example over and over in multiple posts. But I did painstakingly go through many editions of this piece. My example comes from the aforementioned Chopin competition. In the Grave, the principal theme returns to include the dramatic opening octaves in Henle, and it is executed this way in the competition. In all my other other listenings including Horowitz, Pollini, Rubinstein ... Rachmaninoff and Argerich don't take the repeat on record; and in the editions Mikuli, Scholtz, Klindworth, Kullak, Peters ... the repeat begins on the doppio movimento. This could be considered small, but it sounds quite jarring to my ear to repeat such a dramatic opening, creating discontinuity, but that is urtext for you, take it or leave it.
There are also other things (skip ahead if not interested in details)-- no marking for "piano" after "forte" in the ascending-descending scherzino-like passage before the first repeat (r.h. Eb-Bb, C-Gb, Eb-Bb, C-Gb, etc.), or accents in the "standard places" in the same section. What I called the "ascending-descending" passage is called "segue" in my Mikuli edition. All performers play f then p, but this is not really clear in the Henle score.
Well, I've written too much. I've recently played for some professors who didn't wince at my handing them the Mikuli edition of my Chopin pieces to be played. I think there are greater things to worry about.
About recordings with cuts in them, there was a thread some time ago which wandered into the subject of piano teachers encouraging cuts in various compositions: so to these teachers, altering the dynamics to make the music more personally satisfying I would bet is not okay, but cutting out a repeat to make the music more personally satisfying is okay! Someone even said that now it is normal in the U.S. and Canada to remove the repeats, for which reason a composer was feeling compelled to write into a score that the repeats must be performed!
About your experiences with music professors, I have had some positive experiences with music professors as well - but also very negative ones depending I suppose on the variable of the repertoire involved. There are many compositions which it seems are expected to be played with a particular tempo and with a particular use of piano tone, and exceptions to this seem to cause a severe cognitive dissonance with some listeners.
I get concerned whenever these discussions of the 19th century pianist-composers come up because scholarly knowledge of artifacts of creativity is different than a knowledge of creativity itself - and one of the attributes of creativity is that in proportion to the degree of creativity involved the outcome is not predictable. If in a sense Mikuli gave us a more historically complete presentation of Chopin's music than Henle, nonetheless playing the music as notated in Mikuli's editions in terms of notes, rests, note and rest durations, dynamics, phrasing, pedaling, touch, tempo relationships, et c., is no more creative than playing the music as it is notated in the Henle editions.
Looked at another way one could ascend a stair case through these floors:
1) Henle's Chopin edition 2) Mikuli's and Tellefsen's Chopin editions and various historical recordings 3) aspects of Chopin's intentions and creativity as documented by observers and not incorporatable into music notation 4) access to an energized creative force, unique and unpredictable in outcomes for anyone who accesses it
From a lot of persons supportive of the expanded study of the 19th century pianists and composers I get the sense that they would not be happy with no. 4 as it is not a respecter of nos. 3 and 2 - just as nos. 3 and 2 are not respecters of no. 1. But without no. 4 there would never have been Chopin, Liszt, Anton Rubinstein or Busoni, and there would not be anything for music Ph.D.s to research or for pianists to perform!
Many of these researchers of the 19th century might want to dig up and revive the past somewhat, but perhaps still making sure that at least one foot remains standing in the grave.
...altering the dynamics to make the music more personally satisfying I would bet is not okay...
I believe this is the main question here--i.e., whether Mikuli's added dynamics are legit, based on his own experiences as a student and teaching assistant. Teachers' interpretations are a completely different subject I believe.
Would I be correct in inferring that no. 1 in your list is superior to no. 2? That really gets to heart of Henle vs. Schirmer. My position is that we should not be so quick to brand Mikuli as a Romanticized version of Chopin, given he had scores marked by Chopin's own pen.
If I were serious about working on Chopin for public performance, what I'd do is use an urtext as the basic score from which to work, and use Mikuli (and others) as worthwhile extra knowledge.
A problem with many old non-urtext editions is that we just don't know exactly what comes from where, i.e., the editors seldom, if ever, are scrupulous about differentiating stuff they are making up from stuff they got from other sources, or exactly what the sources are.
If I were serious about working on Chopin for public performance, what I'd do is use an urtext as the basic score from which to work, and use Mikuli (and others) as worthwhile extra knowledge.
A problem with many old non-urtext editions is that we just don't know exactly what comes from where, i.e., the editors seldom, if ever, are scrupulous about differentiating stuff they are making up from stuff they got from other sources, or exactly what the sources are.
I would recommend taking this approach as well. Plus, the Henle urtext at least, is highly legible and sits nicely on the music desk. Also, the many at-first "strange" notes and dynamic markings are not altogether unnoticible in urtextian performances, at least to me. I'd venture that if one listens to a number of recordings of a piece under study, on YouTube, that differences will (could?) be revealed.
Like I said, though, is it really so blasphemous to prefer, and to perform, a Mikuli edition? Most of the "greats" did this, Horowitz till 1989, many years after urtext was published.
Like I said, though, is it really so blasphemous to prefer, and to perform, a Mikuli edition? Most of the "greats" did this, Horowitz till 1989, many years after urtext was published.
At my level, it's blasphemous to try to play Chopin at all, and at Horowitz' level, none of his fans would care if he'd learned it all by ear and didn't even have a score.
Like I said, though, is it really so blasphemous to prefer, and to perform, a Mikuli edition? Most of the "greats" did this, Horowitz till 1989, many years after urtext was published.
At my level, it's blasphemous to try to play Chopin at all, and at Horowitz' level, none of his fans would care if he'd learned it all by ear and didn't even have a score.
Fair enough! The first Chopin I learned was Nocturne 9/2. I was young then- and absolutely could not sit through a sonata!
I believe this is the main question here--i.e., whether Mikuli's added dynamics are legit, based on his own experiences as a student and teaching assistant. Teachers' interpretations are a completely different subject I believe.
Would I be correct in inferring that no. 1 in your list is superior to no. 2? That really gets to heart of Henle vs. Schirmer. My position is that we should not be so quick to brand Mikuli as a Romanticized version of Chopin, given he had scores marked by Chopin's own pen.
For the purposes of the illustration it was being suggested that Mikuli and Tellefsen are more complete than Henle, but I'm not actually suggesting this is true as in art less often really is more. To me both a variant from Chopin and an urtext are variant relative to each other. For those who want to do so I wonder how one can effectively incorporate Chopin's non-urtext variants into a performance. This youtube video of the Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2, for instance, seemingly includes all of them for this composition rather than a tempered or carefully chosen selection:
And here is the list of the variants from the youtube page:
(00:26) 2a - written for Camilla O'Meara (Madame Dubois) (1830-1907) (00:41) 4 - written for Camilla O'Meara (Madame Dubois) (00:49) 5 - published by Karol(Carl) Mikuli (1821-97) (01:22) 6 - written for Jane Stirling (1804-59) (01:29) 7 - from Wilhelm von Lenz(1809-83)'s article (01:30) 8a - written for Ludwika Jędrzejewiczowa (01:37) 9 - written for Ludwika Jędrzejewiczowa (02:19) 12 - written for Jane Stirling (02:25) 13 - from Wilhelm von Lenz's article (02:26) 14a - published by Karol Mikuli (02:34) 15 - from August Franchomme (02:57) 18 - published by Karol Mikuli (03:42) 19a - published by Karol Mikuli (03:55) 20 - written for Zofia Rosengardt (Madame Zaleska) (1814-68) (from Virginia Fortescue's collection, University of Port Elisabeth, South Africa) (04:24) 21a - written for Jane Stirling